Pneumachronicity and Temporal Disobedience in Thoreau’s A Week

Pneumachronicity and Temporal Disobedience in Thoreau’s A Week

Last week, Amanda posed some questions to my blog post about my paper exploring the connections between (and implications of) Body Theology and Pneumachronicity (spirit time) in Thoreau’s A Week. She asked, “[What’s] at stake here? What does pneumachronicity do for people? What does it give them that Christianity doesn't?” And, I think she’s very right to ask (Thanks, Amanda!). I’ve been mulling over these questions for the past week, and wondering if Thoreau is trying to replace Christianity, or re-imagine time via the theological. In A Week, it’s unequivocally evident that Thoreau does not take very kindly to the particular brand of Christianity that was ubiquitous across New England. His most pointed criticisms are appropriately recorded in the “Sunday” portion of the text. Apart from pointing out the hypocrisy and lazy reading habits among New England Christians, he seems intensely aware that Christianity is merely a scheme, a system of belief. He reminds Christians that there is nothing essential or absolute about what they believe: “You did not invent it [the scheme]; it was imposed upon you,” he writes, followed by the imperative, “Examine your authority” (A Week 57). Furthermore, Thoreau is deeply suspicious of the uncompromising certitude that Christianity purports: “Some, to me, seemingly very unimportant and unsubstantial things and relations, are for them everlastingly settled,— as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the like. These are like the everlasting hills to them. But in all my wanderings I never came across the least vestige of authority for these things. They have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological period on the coal in my grate” (A Week 57). Across his oeuvre, Thoreau is minutely aware of the ways that authorities impose upon and violate selfhood, individual conscience, and independence. He attempts to resist these impositions at every turn. His objections to Christianity are no exception. He doesn’t defy Christianity per se, but only its formulas and confinements. Above all else, he wants to disrupt the exceptionalism of Christianity by contextualizing it among other religious and spiritual traditions. He writes,

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swendenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too. “God is the letter Ku, as well as Khu.” Why need Christians be still intolerant and superstitious? (55)

In conjunction with his universalizing of religious and spiritual traditions, placing Christ and Buddha on equal footings, he consistently refers to mythology as timeless, perennial truth, returning over and over in every epoch:

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far as being false or fabulous in a common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, and I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. (49)

Adding later, too, that “[one] memorable addition to the old mythology is due to this era,— the Christian fable” (54).

And, for Thoreau, I think this is the juncture where religion and spirituality intersect with temporality. That is, spirituality is, in fact, a temporality. When the dogmas and strictures of religion enter into the realm of mythology, of timelessness, of perennial truth, the belief system becomes de-historicized, maybe ahistorical, even. And that’s why I think Thoreau’s pnuemachronicity is less about establishing an alternative to Christianity, or any religion, for that matter, and more about wresting time away from the myopic logics and obscurations of historical Christian time, enacting a temporal disobedience so that one’s scheme can become the “framework of the universe” (58). For Thoreau, temporal disobedience is only possible when the historical confinements of religion’s doctrines and dogmas are dissolved into the boundlessness of mythology. Spirit time, traversing the ages, allows one to access, and imagine, the succession and procession of myth as a universal de-historicized religion, as well as invites each person to construct his or her own Pantheon according to their particular imaginative “scheme.”

Also, if you guys would weigh in, here’s my working title:

“Temporal Disobedience, or History Within and Without Time: Body Theology and Pneumachronicity in Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”

It’s too much, right? Ha. There’s just so much happening.

I’m starting to think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew for this essay. And it only has to be 12 pages. Although I do think there are some really interesting and important connections to make, I may have to wait to pursue those… For the time being, perhaps I should narrow my argument and expand it at a later date. Please advise…